"Sheen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distinguished from aloft, say at 1,500 to 3,000 feet, by the hum which life and movement emit, and this is the best guide to the aerial scout or battleship. The German authorities have made a special study of this peculiar problem, and have conducted innumerable tests upon the darkest nights, when even the sheen of the moon has been unavailable, for the express purpose of training the aerial navigators to discover their position from the different sounds reaching them from below. In other words, the corsair in ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... with their bellies in the snow whimpering uneasily. Wild-eyed, the Indian pointed aloft and Connie glanced upward. There was no hint of blue in the cloudless sky. The whole dome of the heavens glared with a garish, brassy sheen from which the sun blazed out with an unwholesome, metallic light that gleamed in glints of gold from millions of floating frost spicules. Even as the two stood gazing upward new suns formed in the burnished sky—false suns ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... "sheen"? Has it more significance than "bright"? Richmond in its old name was Shene. Would you call an omnibus to take you to Shene? How the "all's right" man ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... stairway turn again our eyes; The fourth stage plated o'er with beaten gold We pass, and topaz fifth till we behold The sixth of azure blue; to seventh glide, That glows with silvery summit where reside The gods, within a shrine of silvery sheen Which brightly glows, and from afar is seen. Without the temple, burnished silver shines; Within, pure gold ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... on a dark cloak and hat, she ran downstairs and out into the avenue. Lady Arabella had moved, but the sheen of her white dress was still to be seen among the young oaks around the gateway. Keeping in shadow, Mimi followed, taking care not to come so close as to awake the other's suspicion, and watched her quarry pass along the road in the direction ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... himself; "there must be some near at hand. Surely, if it exists Nep will find it." As he advanced further he found himself in a small valley running directly up from the sea, and shortly afterwards his eye fell on the sheen of water. It appeared to be a stream running down the centre and losing itself in the porous sand before it reached the ocean. He uttered a cry of joy, and pushed forward. He was soon stooping down, lapping the water up eagerly with his ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... footstep and the rustle of a woman's silken skirts across the stone flags behind her. She looked up quickly; Helen stood beside her. Helen, in all the sheen of her gay Paris garments, with the evening light upon her uncovered head, and the glow of a passion, fiercer than madness, in her glittering eyes. Some prescience of evil—she knew not of what—made Vera spring to ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... brim of the tall hat had a sheen like the hat itself; his cheeks, pale and flat, the line of his clean-shaven lips, his firm chin with its greyish shaven tinge, and the buttoned strictness of his black cut-away coat, conveyed an appearance of reserve and secrecy, of imperturbable, enforced composure; but his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... conscientious, troubled elder-boy who was working so hard to entertain us. A theorist has held the view that there is no feature in man so tell-tale as his spectacles; that the mouth may be compressed and the brow smoothed artificially, but the sheen of the barnacles is diagnostic. And truly it must have been thus with Kelland; for as I still fancy I behold him frisking actively about the platform, pointer in hand, that which I seem to see most clearly is the way his glasses glittered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Zion, All jubilant with song,[47] And bright with many an angel; And all the martyr throng. The Prince is ever in them, The daylight is serene; The pastures of the blessed Are decked in glorious sheen. ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... slept, By the light of the moon were seen Most beautiful things—there were flowers and trees; There were bevies of birds and swarms of bees; There were cities with temples and towers, and these All pictured in silver sheen! ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... hour. But it was eight before we got clear of Calistoga: Kelmar, Mrs. Kelmar, a friend of theirs whom we named Abramina, her little daughter, my wife, myself, and, stowed away behind us, a cluster of ship's coffee-kettles. These last were highly ornamental in the sheen of their bright tin, but I could invent no reason for their presence. Our carriageful reckoned up, as near as we could get at it, some three hundred years to the six of us. Four of the six, besides, were Hebrews. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... neighboring chair, where it was sitting bolt upright. Her costume was fresh from the modiste, and her feet, though hopelessly pigeon-toed, were encased in bronze boots of a freshness which caught the dim gaslight with a golden sheen. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... sheer into deep water below. The river narrowed down at the brink, and the volume of water was stupendous. The drop was over one hundred feet. The water was of the colour of strong tea, and as it fell it drew over its brown sheen a lovely, creamy fleece of foam. Tight little curls of spray puffed out of the falling water like jets of smoke, and, spreading and descending, merged into the white cloud that rolled about the foot of the falls. This cloud itself billowed up in successive undulations like ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... comrades. They paused at sight of that company ranged upon the stairs, as well they might, for a more incongruous sight could scarcely be imagined. Across the bodies of the slain, and revealed by the lifting powder smoke, stood that little band of thirty men, a blaze of gay colours, a sheen of silken hose, their wigs curled and powdered, their costly ruffles scintillant with jewels; calm, and supercilious, mocking to a man. There was a momentary gasp of awe, and then the spell was broken by the aristocrats themselves. A pistol spoke, and a volley ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... yard of a house in the Werderschen Market, behind an apparently innocent archway on the Hausvogtei Platz, at the backs of houses whose fronts betrayed no existence of any water near. My sister so often longed to catch sight of the oily satiny sheen of the river's light in unsuspected places that she would drag me off to note her discoveries. She wanted all the varying sights of the Spree, which showed itself at the ends of alleys, or in courtyards or behind houses, suddenly to appear to ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Neither time, nor the ills of life, nor the elements could ever affect this living statue of death. The all-destroying hand of time had touched her and stopped short. Time could do no more, and so had left her. And with all this, not a single grey hair. Her long black locks shone with a greenish sheen, and fell in heavy masses down ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Then she closed one window and sat down by the other, which she left open. How she enjoyed the whole scene! Almost behind the church tower was the moon, which shed its light upon the grassy plot with the sundial and the heliotrope beds. Everything was covered with a silvery sheen. Beside the strips of shadow lay white strips of light, as white as linen on the bleaching ground. Farther on stood the tall rhubarb plants with their leaves an autumnal yellow, and she thought of the day, only a little over two years before, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... resplendent queen, With simple rites, these mingling souls were wed; The happy stars looked down, with brighter sheen, To view love's wretched fears for ever fled; The wild flowers trembled in their dewy bed, And up a most enchanting fragrance sent; The blissful Hours, unnoticed, onward sped; And, with their gentle music sweetly ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... finding a mirror in every pool, as young girls will; but now she trembled and was afraid. The rustling of the trees in the darkness, the hooting of an owl, the awful purity of the moonlight in the glades, the cold sheen of the water, were to her troubled conscience omens of judgment. Had it not been for the kindness of Peter Bruce, which was a pledge of human forgiveness, there would have been no heart in her to dare that wood, and it was with a sob of relief she escaped from the shadow and looked upon the old ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... the Larian lake!* Soft lake like a silver sea, The Huntress Queen, with her nymphs of sheen, Never had bath like thee. See, the Lady of night and her maids of light, Even now ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... appear, are like the rosebud in spring, when it has not yet opened to the full. Her hair, which is nearly always bedecked and adorned with flowers, is invariably of the color of flax, as soft as silk, and shimmering with a sheen of the finest gold." (J.F. Rowbotham, The Troubadours and Courts ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... whether it be conferred with good will or hurled into his face and bestowed upon him in spite of himself. If the logical and regulated system of exploitation be chosen, stifling with the jingle of gold and the sheen of opulence the sentiments of independence in the colonies, paying with its wealth for its lack of liberty, as the English do in India, who moreover leave the government to native rulers, then build roads, lay out highways, foster the freedom of trade; let the government ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... At such times he felt the goodness of being alive, the mild intoxication of the fragrant air which filled the valley, the majestic beauty of those insentient hills upon which the fierce midsummer sun was baring glacial patches that gleamed now like blue diamonds or again with a pale emerald sheen, in a setting of worn granite and white snowdrifts five thousand ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... yellow incantation, You sitting in the cowslips of the meadows above, —Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs, Me full length in the cowslips, muttering you love— You, your soul like a lady-smock, lost, evanescent, You, with your face all rich, like the sheen ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... deaf now to any consideration save that of artistic endeavor. With a swift accuracy that was nearly marvelous he put on the canvas the sheen of faultless limbs and slender neck. He even secured the spun-gold glint of hair tightly coifed under a bathing cap—a species of head-dress which had puzzled him at the first glance—and there was more than a suggestion of a veritable portrait of ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... quick notes of the song suited the sunshiny weather, the sheen of the river, the azure skies. A light wind brought from the orchard a vagrant troop of pink and white petals to camp upon the silken sleeve of Mistress Evelyn Byrd. The gentleman sitting beside her gathered them up and gave them again to ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... are on that rose beme, They be both bright and sheen. The rose is called Mary, heaven queen, Of her bosom a ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... Annie was ushered into the parlor. When Annie had been a little thing she had been enamoured of and impressed by the splendor of this parlor. Now she had doubts of it, in spite of the long, magnificent sweep of lace curtains, the sheen of carefully kept upholstery, the gleam of alabaster statuettes, and the even piles of gilt-edged books ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... their purple favours, Thro' becks that brattled o'er grasses sheen, We walked and waded, we two young shavers, Thanking our stars ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... plunging his magnificent head angrily into the sheen of the bronze Atlantic when Septimus Minor scaled the craggy path which leads from Crocusville to the towering ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... is as fair as a lily flower. (The Peacock blue has a sacred sheen!) Oh, bright are the blooms in her maiden bower. (Sing Hey! Sing Ho! for the ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... securities. Yes! Alan Hawke is the only man whom I fear now as to the safety of either the girl or the jewels. He seems to have had many old dealings with Hugh Johnstone, too!" They were silent as they threaded the beautiful Surrey garden lanes of the old burgh of Sheen. Loved by the bluff Harrys of the English throne, its beauties sung by poet and deputed by artist, the charming declivities of Richmond gained a new name from Henry VII, and its bosky shades once saw ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... rock exposed in situ was mainly a uniform type of gneiss, crumpled and folded, showing all the signs of great antiquity—pre-Cambrian, in the geological phrase. Relieving the grey sheen of the gneiss were dark bands of schist which tracked about in an irregular manner. Sporadic quartz veins here and there showed a light tint. They were specially interesting, for they carried some less common minerals such as beryl, tourmaline, garnet, coarse mica and ores ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... through heavy woods, nights that were crisp and still as death, the sky a vast dome sprinkled with flickering stars, brilliant at times with the Northern Lights, that strange glow that flashes and shimmers above the Pole, now a banner of flame, again only a misty sheen. Sometimes it seemed an unreality, that silence, that immensity of hushed forest, those vast areas in which life was not a factor. When a blizzard whooped out of the northern quarter, holding them ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... With gradual stealth the lateral windows hide Their portraitures, their stone-work glimmers, dyed In the soft chequerings of a sleepy light. Martyr, or King, or sainted Eremite, Whoe'er ye be, that thus, yourselves unseen, Imbue your prison-bars with solemn sheen, Shine on, until ye fade, with coming night. But from the arms of silence—list! O list! The music bursteth into second life; The notes luxuriate, every stone is kissed By sound, or ghost of sound, in mazy strife; Heart-thrilling strains, that cast, before ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... the meadow fast asleep. Near random bushes, one by one, Nestled around a pond, the sheep Are scattered and doze in graceful shade; And hazed cornfields beyond the glade, Undulating and dazzling sight, Seem quivering for predestined flight To worlds of unrevealed delight. In lustrous sheen, their stately looks Sedate as parsons reading books, Flock grey-billed, see-saw-gaited rooks Strutting; or when they wings assume Pluck the warm air with fingered plume, Labouring, anxious if weight and size Make flight most hazardous or wise! Nelly ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... the Masone, as far as Mount Comero, which, in the distance, lifted its round shoulder from the haze of sea. To the west the country lay under the same winding-sheet of snow as far as eye might range, to the towers of distant Perugia, to the Lake Trasimeno—a silver sheen that broke the white monotony—to Etruscan Cortona, perched like an eyrie on its mountain top, and to the line of Tuscan hills, like heavy, low-lying clouds ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... fields, nor smelt, as they grow fresh in the hedges, wild flowers. She imagined that flowers grew either in bunches, as they were sold in Convent Garden, or singly in pots. It never entered into her wildest dreams that the ground could be carpeted with the soft sheen of bluebells or the summer snow of wood anemones, or that the hedge banks could hold great clusters of starry primroses. No, Sue had never seen the place where she and Giles would live together when they were old. ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... thinking of at her age; with her pretensions to a fine figure, an ethereal carriage, and beauty? And yet it must be admitted that her complexion is not made up. She has the sheen of the lily mingled with that of the rose, and her eyes exhibit a smiling vivacity which leaves our great coquettes ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... not happy, simply because you want to tell some one how happy you are. What is the starlight for, save to call some one's attention to, or the phosphorescent sheen except to be pointed out and enjoyed by two? Exquisite beauty, as revealed in music, painting, sculpture or beautiful scenery, affects me at times to tears; and there always comes creeping into my life a profound sadness, a dread ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... sea. And on that round young cheek of thine I make them recognize the tinge, As when of the costly scarlet wine 585 They drip so much as will impinge And spread in a thinnest scale afloat One thick gold drop from the olive's coat Over a silver plate whose sheen Still through the mixture shall be seen. 590 For so I prove thee, to one and all, Fit, when my people ope their breast, To see the sign, and hear the call, And take the vow, and stand the test Which ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the point of the headland, he looked round. The weather was much clearer; but westwards a glimmering sheen of ice—black land stretching along, black islands, snow-crowned, rising midway afar. Eastward, ha! that is what should have been done hours ago. A fire burned on the edge of the woods at some distance. So they had really passed Cedar Creek ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... throwing her arms out, and fell heavily. She jumped up at once and turned swiftly to look back, her clenched hands full of sand she had clutched in her fall. The face was there, keeping its distance, visible in its own sheen that made a pale stain in the night. She shouted, "Go away!"—she shouted at it with pain, with fear, with all the rage of that useless stab that could not keep him quiet, keep him out of her sight. What did he want now? He was dead. Dead men have no ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... steel, which he unlocked with seven keys of steel he took from beside his thigh, and out of it a young lady to come was seen, white-skinned and of winsomest mien, of stature fine and thin, and bright as though a moon of the fourteenth night she had been, or the sun raining lively sheen. Even so the poet ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... greyish sheen in certain lights; snout nude; eyes apparently wanting. Jerdon says there is no perforation of the integument over the eyes, but this I doubt, and think that by examination with a lens an opening would be discovered, as in the case of the Apennine mole, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... merged with neckless rigidity directly into a heavy-shouldered body that tapered into an almost wasp-like slenderness at the waist. He was naked save for a loin cloth of some metallic fabric. His bluish-gray skin had a dull oily sheen strangely suggestive of fine grained ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... City, within sight of the trees of Sheen, as Richmond was still often called, Randall insisted that Dennet should eat some of the bread and meat that Tibble had brought in a wallet for her. "She must look her best," he said aside to the foreman. "I would that ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... from his fellow grew With branches broad, laden with leaves new, That springen out against the sunny sheen, Some very red and ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... casement, through which the moonlight stole soft and sheen, with one lamp beside her, from which she seemed to shade her eyes, though in reality she sought to hide her countenance from Lucia, the young Signora appeared absorbed in one of those tender sonnets which then turned the brains and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to be a pepper tree—an importation from China. It has a silky sheen, soft and rich. I saw some that had long red bunches of currant-like berries ambushed among the foliage. At a distance, in certain lights, they give the tree a pinkish ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... samiel hath gone O'er thee like a demon's breath, Marking victims one by one For its master—Death. And the mirage thou hast seen Glittering in the sunny sheen, Like some lake in sunlight sleeping, Where the desert wind was sweeping, And the sandy column gliding, ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... brightly, and he could picture the dazzling sheen of the waves as they rippled and flashed. He could picture, too, the golden-brown seaweed and the creamy-drab barnacles on the rocks which had felt so rough and strange to his ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken— The ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... River rests the sheen of light; over the hills rests the sheen of romance. The land is enchanted. Birds dip and sway, advance and retreat; leaves toss their hands in greeting, or bend and whisper one to the other; splashes of sun fall heavy as metal through the yielding screens of branches; little ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... golden-hearted arrow-head neighbored the homespun pickerel-weed, and—oh, mysterious glory from an oozy bed!—luscious, sun-golden cow-lilies rose sturdily triumphant, dripping with color, glowing in sheen. The button-bush hung out her balls, and white alder painted the air with faint perfume; willow-herb built her bowery arches, and the flags were ever glancing like swords of roistering knights. These flags, be it known to such as have grown up in grievous ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... as we call it in Eastern gardens, where we cultivate it for its oddity, I suppose. When the sojourner in this land of flowers sees, opening on all sides of this inhospitable-looking plant, rich cream-colored cups, the size of a Jacqueminot bud, and of a rare, satiny sheen, she cannot resist the desire to fill a low dish with them ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... platform shaded by a few grandiose umbrella pines. Near at hand, on a slightly lower level, rose a group of flame—like cypresses whose shapely outlines stood out against the sea, shining far below like a lake of pearl. The milky sheen of morning, soon to be dispelled by the breeze, still hung about the water and distant continent—it trembled upon the horizon in bands of translucent opal. His eye roved round the undulating garden, full of sunlight and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... People flocked. So swarmed of old Some migratory nation, instinct-urged To fly their native wastes sad winter's realm; So thronged on southern slopes when, far below, Shone out the plains of promise. Bright they came! No summer sea could wear a blithsomer sheen Though every dancing crest and milky plume Ran on with rainbows braided. Minstrel songs Wafted like winds those onward hosts, or swayed Or stayed them; while among them heralds passed Lifting white ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... and look at her, to answer her. Against the window's still pallid sky I see her hair, silvered with a moonlike sheen, and her night-veiled face. Closely I look at the share of sublimity which she bears on it, and I reflect that I am infinitely attached to this woman, that it is not true to say she is of less ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... made an end of his verses when there came out upon him from among the trees a horseman of terrible mien covered and clad in steely sheen, who cried out to him, saying, "Stand, O riff-raff of the Arabs! Doff thy dress and ground thine arms gear and dismount thy destrier and be off with thy life!" When Jawamard heard this, the light in his eyes became darkest night and he drew his sabre ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... wound around the hills; here and there a break in the arboreal border showed views of rolling country, well-shaped and pleasing, winding up grassy slopes in groves of verdure. Of course most of the freshness of leaf was past, yet the modest gray-green gave a silvery sheen to the landscape that brought it ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... eleven o'clock the light breeze was still holding, and the ship was floating softly through the dusk, the paring of moon swaying like a silver sickle over the port mizzen topsail yard-arm, everything quiet along the decks, no light save the sheen from the lamps in the binnacle, and nothing stirring but the figure of a man on the forecastle pacing athwartships, and blotting out at every step a handful of the stars which lay like dust on the blackness, under the yawn of the forecourse. ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... clustered on each side of the brook, and the hounds sat stately on their haunches where riflemen usually kneel to fire, and there was a hum of merry voices, and the bright colouring of pink coats, and the sheen of ladies' hunting toilettes, and that mingled look of business and amusement which is so peculiar to our national sports. Two hundred men and women had come there for the chance of a run after a fox,—for a chance against which the odds ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... random. She repeated the viands named. There was a tiny tendril of her hair that curled low upon her neck at one side, caressing the pale satin sheen of the skin. He felt an overpowering desire to lean forward and press his lips ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... from gilded domes; It glorified the massive blocks caught in its widening flow, Engulfed the maze of streets and parks that stretched away below, Till marble white and foliage green and vales of gray, and silvery sheen Of ocean's surface vast, serene, were ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Irishman to his feet and facing him down the long slope they must go. Then he started him with a shove, and McCan, braking and steering with his staff, shot into the sheen ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... little head of wavy black hair lay in the crook of his elbow. The loosened strands breeze-blown against his cheek seemed light as the sheen of a spider's craft. These waved to the rhythm of beauty above a low white forehead veined in an indefinite tint of blue. The eyebrows were fine and daintily arched. Black lashes long and up-curling swept the unexplainable curve of her cheek, at the present time apparently masking ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... the whole surface of the cascade; but he could see nothing but the glistening sheen of the water, and the mass of white foam where it broke over ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... how much he coveted the picture. In the meantime she was very agreeable to look at. Her strong, regular features suggested neither youth nor age. She was of the goddess breed. Every detail of the lady's envelope was perfect—velvet and fur, a glimpse of exquisite antique lace, a sheen of pearl necklace, neither so large as to be ostentatious nor so small as to suggest economy. The Great Man's instinct of the masterpiece stirred. "What can I do for you?" he said, as she showed no further desire to ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... neither cessation nor sheltered fatness and ease. The touch of him tells in action. Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattained. Thenceforward is no rest: they see the space and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. The companion of him beholds the birth and progress of stars, and learns one of the meanings. Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos. The elder encourages the younger, and shows him how: they two ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Favored by the clear-obscure, the material skill employed by art to produce illusion entirely disappears. If the work is a picture, the figures represented seem to speak and walk; the shade is shadow, the light is day; the flesh lives, eyes move, blood flows in their veins, and stuffs have a changing sheen. Imagination helps the realism of every detail, and only sees the beauties of the work. At that hour illusion reigns despotically; perhaps it wakes at nightfall! Is not illusion a sort of night to the mind, which we people with dreams? Illusion then unfolds its ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... had come. The church of the village Stood gleaming white in the morning's sheen. On the spire of the belfry, Tipped with a vane of metal, the friendly frames of the Spring-sun Glanced like the tongues of fire, beheld by Apostles aforetime. Clear was the heaven and blue, and May, with her cap crowned ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... admiration at his splendid appearance went up. He was in perfect condition, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, and the one hundred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so many pounds of grit and virility. His furry coat shone with the sheen of silk. Down the neck and across the shoulders, his mane, in repose as it was, half bristled and seemed to lift with every movement, as though excess of vigor made each particular hair alive and active. The great breast and heavy fore legs were no more than in proportion with the rest of the body, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... were a great many people present, and dancing had commenced in the ball-room. It was a brave assembly, men wearing brilliant uniforms and the decorations of every nation in Europe, and women beautiful in themselves, glorious in sheen of satin, rustle of silk, and flash of jewels. Women's light laughter answered men's jests—on every side were gayety and careless acceptance of the pleasures of the passing hour. It was difficult to believe that under it all lay deceit and treachery. Ellerey ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... kingfisher coiffure is like a cumulus of clouds; her lips part cherry-like; her pomegranate-like teeth conceal a fragrant breath. Her slender waist, so beauteous to look at, is like the skipping snow wafted by a gust of wind; the sheen of her pearls and kingfisher trinkets abounds with splendour, green as the feathers of a duck, and yellow as the plumes of a goose; Now she issues to view, and now is hidden among the flowers; beautiful she is when displeased, beautiful when in high spirits; with lissome step, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the east, she smiles through the cowl of the darkness, Just as I die. Hast thou need of purple to garnish her pathway? Here is my blood, on the hour! pour it out, and the sun in his rising Mayhap will touch it with gold, will lend it the sheen ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... of the eyes [ill-omened,] we had seen Wild cattle's eyes and antelopes' tresses of sable sheen. The huntress of th' eyes[FN60] by night came to me. "Turn in peace," [Quoth I to her;] "This is no time for ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... to this figure are worthy of it. On the right, below, those two divine sleepers, redeeming human nature, and infolding expectation in a robe of pearly sheen. Here is the sweetness of strength,—honey to the valiant; on the other side, its awfulness,—meat to the strong man. His sleep is more powerful than the waking of myriads of other men. What will he do when he has recruited his strength in this ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... would sit down to the piano and play fierce Wagner music in the flicker of blinding flashes, with thunderbolts falling all round, enough to make your hair stand on end; and Jasper would remain stock still on the verandah, adoring the back view of her supple, swaying figure, the miraculous sheen of her fair head, the rapid hands on the keys, the white nape of her neck—while the brig, down at the point there, surged at her cables within a hundred yards of nasty, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and monsieur would pay them well,"—and at another time there were Jacques, and Jean, and Andre, and many more who would have been so glad—for it was going to be a day superb: look at the light on the water like the silver and sheen upon a mackerel, to prove her words—but the hands went out last night, and would not return ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... stir of the sparrows in the ivy. There was the passing rumble of an early electric car on the paved aged street, the blurred hurried shuffle of a workman's clumsy shoes. The brightening morning was cool with a premonitory touch of frost; at the window she saw a vanishing silver sheen on ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Hugh said with great positiveness, hanging on to Carl's arm. "They're the shwellest Janes I've ever sheen." ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... in that vast, horizon-wide cathedral of the sea! Its vaulting dome more radiant than St. Peter's sculptured prayer; its altar, clothed with the lace of ocean foam; its pavement strewn with silvery sheen; its sanctuary light the candelabra of the stars. "I will lead thee into solitude and there I will speak to thy soul." God, Eternity, and Things Divine were here made real; and to each lonely boy wrapped in blanket on the dark cold deck, there ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... counsels of heroes. Then that gan inquire chief of the folk, Victory-famed king, throughout the wide crowd, If any there were, elder or younger, Who him in truth was able to tell, 160 Make known by speech, what the god were, The giver of glory,[5] "whose beacon this was, That seemed me so sheen, and saved my people, Brightest of beacons, and gave to me glory, War-speed against foes, through that beautiful tree." 165 They him any answer at all were unable To give in reply, nor could they full well Clearly declare of that victory-sign. ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... she was queen, And all her beauty, late and soon, O'ercame you like the mellow sheen Of some serene autumnal noon. Her presence like a sweetest tune Accorded all your thoughts in one. Than last year's alder-tufts in June Browner, yet lustrous as a moon Her eyes glowed on you, and her hair With such an air as princes wear She trimmed black-braided ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... the rushy-fringed bank, Where grows the willow and the osier dank, My sliding chariot stays, Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen Of turkis blue, and emerald green, That in the channel strays; Whilst from off the waters fleet Thus I set my printless feet O'er the cowslip's velvet head, That bends not as I tread. Gentle swain, at thy ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... thought it no extravagance to liken it to the moonbeams that played over her made audible. She was lithe, yet plump; barred with black and yellow and small-waisted like a pretty wasp. Her complexion in that light was a sheen of pearl satin that made her eyes blacker and her little mouth redder than any other color could. She was small, but, remembering the fourteen-year-old wife of the shopkeeper, he felt that, for all her childish voice and features, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... pressed against a small tree, her hands clasped lightly about one knee, with dark eves gazing afar where the broad river danced away into the golden sheen. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... varied color, arranged almost as nature's cunning arranges hues in the rainbow, tones of red coming first, succeeded by a broad stripe of yellow, the yellow being followed by blue. Above this the glowing silvery summit melted into the bright sheen of the sky. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... stage," the master said. To-night a mightier truth is read: Not in the shifting canvas screen, The flash of gas, or tinsel sheen; Not in the skill whose signal calls From empty boards baronial halls; But, fronting sea and curving bay, Behold ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... rising smoke, it became thicker and thicker, and filled the whole Temple. His eyes gazed from the Altar to the glittering gold curtains behind it. The reflection from the coals, and the playing of the blue and purple smoke on the golden sheets, caused them to sheen and shimmer until they faded entirely away into the blue and purple maze that ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... I capped the candles, and, taking post in the deep bay of the window, set myself to watch for the lighting of the great room at the front. This had two windows on my side, and while I could not see them, I knew that I should see the sheen of light upon ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... on which the assembly was held, Mistress Anne's woman brought to her a beautiful robe. 'Twas flowered satin of the sheen and softness of a dove's breast, and the lace adorning it was like a spider's web for gossamer fineness. The robe was sweetly fashioned, fitting her shape wondrously; and when she was attired in it at night a little colour came into her cheeks to see herself so far beyond ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the doors, a babel of postillions' cries—nothing of a kind likely to be impressive was wanting; and, on reaching the salon, the visitor actually found himself obliged to close his eyes for a moment, so strong was the mingled sheen of lamps, candles, and feminine apparel. Everything seemed suffused with light, and everywhere, flitting and flashing, were to be seen black coats—even as on a hot summer's day flies revolve around a sugar loaf while the old housekeeper is cutting it into cubes before the open window, and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the ceiling in blinding rays, oozed from the walls in fillets, window-sashes and frames of all sorts. One retained a little of it on one's hands after moving a chair or opening a window; and even the hangings, having been dipped in that Pactolus, preserved upon their stiff folds the rigidity and sheen of metal. But there was nothing individual, homelike, dainty. It was the monotonous splendor of the furnished apartment. And this impression of a flying camp, of a temporary establishment, was heightened by the idea ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... like a wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... larboard side, gave me some sight of her hull, but not much, because of the weed in which she was deeply embedded; yet it seemed to me that her sides were very weather-worn, and in one place some glistening brown object, which may have been a fungus, caught the rays of the sun, sending off a wet sheen. ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... knows. Thou'rt truly worthy of thy fame for boastful speech and lust of power, And well dost thou deserve thy name— the Brachail of Rathcroghan's tower.[45] Thy words are fair and soft, O queen! but still I crave one further proof— Give me the scarf of silken sheen, give me the speckled satin woof, Give from thy cloak's empurpled fold the golden brooch so fair to see, And when the glorious gift I hold, for ever am I ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... sometimes they hang above, from wall to wall, and cover the canon with a roof of impending storm; and we can peer long distances up and down this canon corridor, with its cloud roof overhead, its walls of black granite, and its river bright with the sheen of broken waters. Then, a gust of wind sweeps down a side gulch, and, making a rift in the clouds, reveals the blue heavens, and a stream of sunlight pours in. Then, the clouds drift away into the distance, and hang around crags, and peaks, and pinnacles, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... flow'r was ever seen so toodle um. You are my lum ti toodle lay, Pretty, pretty queen, Is rum ti Geraldine and something teen, More sweet than tiddle lum in May. Like the star so bright That somethings all the night, My Geraldine! You're fair as the rum ti lum ti sheen, Hark! there is what—ho! From something—um, you know, Dear, what I mean. Oh I rum! tum!! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... "Sweet sheen of oriental sapphire hue That, mantling in the aspect calm and bright Of the pure air, to the primal circle grew, Began afresh to give my eyes delight Soon as I issued from the deathful air That had cast sadness o'er my mind and sight, The beauteous planet that for love takes care Was making ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... sun was slowly sinking into the green of the western wilderness. A huge saurian dragged his mail-clad body out of the water, and settled quietly in his oozy bed. The sea glimmered in the long, horizontal rays of light which clothed it in a sheen of silver and of gold. The wild sea-gulls winnowed the air with their wings, as they settled in little flocks upon the smooth water, as though to enjoy the bath of soft sunlight that came from the west. The great forests behind the marshes grew dark as the sun slowly ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... chose to stroll out from the fort and climb the gentle slope to the bluffs on that side, and to stand by the rude scaffolding whereon were bleaching the bones of some Dakota brave, could easily see the gleaming, glistening sides of the grand old peak, fully forty miles away,—all one sheen of frosty white that still defied the melting rays. Somebody was up there this very afternoon,—two somebodies. Their figures were blacked in silhouette against the sky close by the Indian scaffolding; but even at the distance one could see they were not Indian ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... the contrasting silken materials. In satin the threads are laid along so that the shining surface ripples with every ray of sunshine, and the shadows are melted into half-lights by the reflections from every fold. It makes a dazzling garment, splendid in its radiant sheen; whereas in velvet, where each thread is placed upright and shorn smoothly, all light is absorbed and there are no reflections, and the whole effects are solemn, rich, and deep.[277] Some of the oldest velvets resemble plush in the length ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the girl. "I hope you'll be brought to a sense of your true condition, Lloyd." She hesitated, smoothing the sheen of her skirt. "It would be an awful cross to father ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... bouquets; nor could the tones and tints of the greens and purples, and the velvet of the occasional heartsease, sparsely used, have been more correctly combined. When the task was ended, the commonplace house was a palace wall, hung with the sheen of fine linen, on which bloomed ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... emerald-green and brown, the knolls, the score or two of little haycocks dotting the meadow, the loaded-up wagons, the patient horses, the slow-strong action of the men and pitchforks—all in the just-waning afternoon, with patches of yellow sun-sheen, mottled by long shadows—a cricket shrilly chirping, herald of the dusk—a boat with two figures noiselessly gliding along the little river, passing under the stone bridge-arch—the slight settling haze of aerial moisture, the sky and the peacefulness expanding ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... face cast clamour, and their hooves shake down the glades, And the hearts of their hounds are eager, and oft they redden blades; Till at last in the noon they tarry in a daisied wood-lawn green, And good and gay is their raiment, and their spears are sharp and sheen, And they crown themselves with the oak-leaves, and sit, both most and least, And there on the forest venison and the ancient wine they feast; Then they wattle the twigs of the thicket to bear their spoil ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... streamlets leaping from the woods. Close to old Malcolm's mills, two wooden jaws Bit up the water on a sloping floor; And here, in season, rush'd the great logs down, To seek the river winding on its way. In a green sheen, smooth as a Naiad's locks, The water roll'd between the shudd'ring jaws— Then on the river level roar'd and reel'd— In ivory-arm'd conflict with itself. "Look down," said Alfred, "Katie, look and see "How that but pictures my mad heart to you. "It tears itself in fighting that ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... and osier Flicker in diffident green; Now, when the poplars are rosier, When the first daisies are seen, And the windows of draper and hosier Are bright with their 'Varsity sheen. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 29, 1890 • Various
... and low flew the heron wailing Under the skies of Augustine.— Naught was spoken. We watched the simple Gulls wing past. Your hat's white wimple Shadowed your eyes. And your lips, a-dimple, Smiled and seemed from your soul to wean An inner beauty, an added sheen, As over the bay our boat went sailing Under ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... which followed were filled with divine enchantment; the prosaic world was transfigured; the intricacies of the law were luminous with the sheen of gold, becoming the quartz veins from which he would mine wealth for Helen; the plants in his little rose-house were cared for with caressing tenderness because they gave buds which would be worn over the heart now throbbing for him. Never did mortal ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... (said the Fay), In the region of the sun I dwell, where in a rich array The clouds encircle the king of day, His radiant journey done. My wings, pure golden, of radiant sheen (Painted as amorous poet's strain), Glimmer at night, when meadows green Sparkle with the perfumed rain While the sun's gone to come again. And clear my hand, as stream that flows; And sweet my breath as air of May; And o'er my ivory shoulders stray Locks of sunshine;—tunes ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... sloping to the south, I saw the farmhouse of my dream. Two tall honey locusts stood like faithful guardians on each side of the porch. An elm drooped over the farther end of the piazza. In the dooryard the foliage of two great silver poplar or aspen trees fluttered perpetually with its light sheen. A maple towered high behind the house, and a brook that ran not far away was shadowed by a weeping willow. Other trees were grouped here and there as if Nature had planted them, and up one a wild grape-vine clambered, its unobtrusive blossoms filling the air ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... it not, nor is it wet By showers, and there the snow doth never fall; The calm clear ether is without a cloud, And over all is spread a soft white sheen. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... patronage.") This done, returns to Commons; disappears behind Chair; SERGEANT-AT-ARMS counts twenty-three; presto! door re-opens; SPEAKER re-appears in butterfly-trim, with full-bottomed wig, silk gown, and shoon on which shimmer the sheen of silver buckles. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... little intelligence has ample opportunity of benefiting many sufferers. The same may be said of the eye. The glare of the sun on the Plain at all seasons, except when the grass is fresh and green in summer, the blinding sheen from the snowy expanse in winter, and the continual smoke that hangs like a cloud two or three feet above the floor of the tent, all combine to attack the eye. Eye diseases are therefore very common. The lama medicines seem ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... and to dominate and compel the motion of the light. Her sister watched her half curiously and half in admiration and wonder. As the floating form grew more intense the arms swayed about and the lips murmured. A sheen as of many jewels played beneath the pearly mist which enrobed her; over her head rose the crest of the Dragon; she seemed to become one with the shining, to draw it backwards into herself. Then from far away came a wondrous ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell |
